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5 Steps to Turn Fans into Brand Ambassadors

Earlier this week, Olapic was at the Savant E-Commerce Conference in Berlin. There, we spoke with senior marketing leaders to learn how to convert a brand’s fans into visual marketing ambassadors. While specific strategies varied depending on the industry, there was collective agreement on the steps needed to engage this important consumer segment.

Step 1: Listen to the Buzz

Less than 5% of attendees could tell how many photos were hashtagged with their brands’ name on social media demonstrating the continued lack of understanding in how to capitalise on visual user-generated, or earned, content. Listening to what customers are posting about a brand and their unique lifestyle preferences should, however, be a priority for modern B2C brands. For most brands, there is a wealth of consumers proudly using their products and showcasing them, but if no one is paying attention, the consumers’ high-value content will go unused and an opportunity to engage them is lost.

You wouldn’t ignore customers that come into your store, so why ignore them when they talk to you on social media?

Step 2: Establish a Process

Relevant processes can support brands in their effort to have an active influence on social and encourage consumers to engage and publish more content:

Publishing – Where the brand posts content frequently in line with its positioning and communication across other channels.

Fan identification – This process can vary depending on the amount of consumer content. Popular brands will have the challenge of addressing a large amount of content and filtering through the noise of irrelevant posts to identify and respond to consumers and fans. They can solve this issue through an automated process with technology such as Olapic’s Photorank™, which recognises the most relevant content based on an algorithmic formula.

Fan engagement – Consumers and fans’ content should not stay unnoticed, so a brand should ensure someone on their team is going through the identified consumer content and is commenting or liking on relevant content.

Step 3: Establish a Culture of Contribution

Encouraging customers to engage with your brand and share relevant content will help learn which ones are posting most often and therefore, most likely to become loyal fans and ambassadors. Encouraging a culture of contribution amongst consumers will help support those objectives. Some ideas discussed at the Savant E-Commerce Conference that can help establish this culture include:

Promote the brand hashtag in product packaging, in-store, at brand hosted events, online and in any other communication channels.

Create competitions or sweepstakes where consumers are asked to share brand related content in exchange for the opportunity to win a prize.

Once fans are identified, send them product samples in exchange for content publication with those products.

Ensuring the ongoing promotion of a hashtag will help remind the consumer that the brand is looking to obtain more content from them on an ongoing basis, and a culture of contribution with that particular brand can be established.

Step 4: Make Fan Content Shoppable

Once the brand has the regular consumer content contribution and ability to identify the users who post it, they will also be in a position to flag those who are fans and post most regularly. This is the moment when the brand should request permission from the users to publish their content in its own marketing efforts and on its website, while associating it with actual products to support the buying process with authentic consumer content.

Step 5: Analyse and Reward

Once fan content has been implemented across the buying journey, the brand will be able to analyse which consumer photos helped influence the most product purchases through technology such as Olapic’s Photorank™. Fan photos that influence product sales the most can then be more clearly identified as ambassadors.

To support their contribution, the brand should then establish ambassador programs in a way that will reward them to ensure their ongoing support. This could be done in several ways, like featuring them more often or offering occasional special treatment, such as sending exclusive event invitations.

Although these five steps may work slightly differently depending on the nature of the business, having the right processes in place that work for your brand and establishing that culture of contribution amongst consumers will certainly help drive more content, higher engagement and, ultimately, identify who your brand ambassadors are.

Image Source: Unsplash.com / By: Anthony Delanoix

Ana De Jesus is the Director, Marketing EMEA & APAC at Olapic, being responsible for driving Olapic's marketing and communications strategy to meet local needs within these regions. Ana is a Chartered Marketer and holds the CIM's Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing. In her spare time she is the author of a reference London blog for Portuguese speakers and has contributed to several books and news articles on the topic of emigration. Ana is passionate about all things social media and digital marketing and you can find her on Twitter: @ana_jesus